Case study · Utilities
Every customer contact in one queue
Utility contact centres handle phone, email, web forms and chat, often in separate tools. This is how we brought them into Dynamics 365 Customer Service with routing, service levels and a knowledge base, so agents see the full history before they answer.
Project overview
An omnichannel contact centre on Dynamics 365.
- Industry
- Utilities
- Client
- Confidential
- Solution
- Omnichannel customer service
- Platform
- Dynamics 365 Customer Service
- Timeline
- 12–20 weeks
- Team
- 5 people
- Channels
- Phone, email, chat, web
- Telephony
- Teams or contact centre platform
- Users
- Agents, supervisors, back office
Expected business outcomes
What the client set out to achieve
Service projects are judged on handling time and first-contact resolution.
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10–25%
Shorter average handling time
Agents see customer history and suggested articles on one screen.
Target range; depends on how many systems agents used before
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5–15 pts
Higher first-contact resolution
Knowledge articles and full case history help agents resolve issues on the first call.
Percentage-point range reported across similar contact centres
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Live
Service level visibility
Supervisors see queues and SLA breaches as they happen.
Where all channels route through one queue
Business challenges
How the contact centre ran before
Each channel was added at a different time, with its own tool.
Phone
Calls logged in a legacy system with free-text notes.
A shared mailbox that several agents work from at once.
Web
Web forms land in another inbox and are copied into cases by hand.
Knowledge
Answers live in agents' heads and a folder of documents.
Supervisors
Queue and SLA figures come from exports at the end of the day.
Proposed solution
What the Customer Service build covers
Standard Customer Service and omnichannel features, configured for the utility's case types.
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Unified routing
Calls, emails, chats and web forms routed to the right queue by skill and priority.
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Case management
Case types for billing, outages, meters and complaints, each with its own process.
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Service levels
SLAs per case type with warnings before breach.
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Knowledge base
Articles suggested to agents and published to customers on the website.
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Customer communications
Templates and automatic updates as cases progress.
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Supervisor dashboards
Live queues, handling times and SLA performance.
Project requirements
What the client asked us for
The request was a single view of the customer. For agents that means one screen with history, open cases and the right answer suggested.
Complaints need special care in regulated industries, so we model them as their own process with deadlines and escalation.
What the project had to deliver
- 01All channels in one queue
- 02Full history on one screen
- 03SLAs that warn before they breach
- 04A knowledge base agents trust
Key challenges & considerations
What made it harder, and what we did
-
Regulatory rules on complaint handling
What we did
Complaints were modelled as their own process, with the regulatory deadlines and escalation steps built in.
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Peaks during outages or billing runs
What we did
Queues and routing were load-tested against outage volumes, with overflow rules for peak periods.
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Customer data held in a separate billing system
What we did
Billing data was shown inside the case through integration, so agents stopped switching systems.
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Agents working from home
What we did
Agents worked in the browser with softphone integration, so home working needed no extra setup.
What we watched for
- Move one channel at a time
- Integrate billing data before go-live
- Model complaints as their own process
- Write knowledge articles with agents, not for them
Development process
Channel by channel, with agents involved
Each channel goes live separately so the contact centre never changes everything at once.
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Case design
Case types, queues, SLAs and complaint rules agreed with operations and compliance.
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Customer data
Integration with billing and metering so agents see accounts and balances.
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Email and web
Email and web forms moved first, because they are easiest to pilot.
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Phone and chat
Telephony and chat added with screen pops and call recording links.
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Knowledge and reporting
Knowledge base populated with agents and supervisor dashboards tuned.
Technology stack
Dynamics 365 Customer Service, end to end
Microsoft's service stack, integrated with the utility's billing system.
Service
- Dynamics 365 Customer Service
- Omnichannel
- Unified routing
Telephony
- Teams Phone or contact centre integration
- Call recording links
Integration
- Billing system APIs
- Dataverse
- Power Automate
Reporting
- Omnichannel analytics
- Power BI
Quality assurance & deployment
Tested by the people who use it every day
A CRM succeeds when people choose to use it. Every process was tested with real users on real scenarios, and data migration was rehearsed until the record counts agreed.
- Scenario testing with users from each role
- Migration rehearsals, with record counts reconciled
- Integration tests for every connected system
- Security roles checked against real job roles
- Solutions moved between environments as managed releases
Deployment
- 01Phone and chatTelephony and chat added with screen pops and call recording links.
- 02Knowledge and reportingKnowledge base populated with agents and supervisor dashboards tuned.
- 03Phased go-liveOne team or region first, then the rest, each wave with training by role.
- 04Hypercare and warrantyDaily support through the first weeks, and six months of free bug fixing.
Final deliverables
Agents with the whole story
Every contact lands in one queue, agents see the customer's history and suggested answers on one screen, and supervisors watch service levels live.
Complaints follow a defined process with deadlines, which makes regulatory reporting a report rather than an investigation.
- One queue for every channel
- Customer history for every agent
- SLA warnings before breach
- Knowledge shared with customers
Handed over to the client
- 01Configured Dynamics 365Production and test environments
- 02Solutions and integrationsAs managed, documented releases
- 03Migrated dataWith record counts reconciled
- 04Training by roleWith short guides
- 05Six-month warrantyFree bug fixing after delivery
Success metrics
How success is measured
| Measure | Outcome | How it is measured |
|---|---|---|
| Shorter average handling time | 10–25% | Target range; depends on how many systems agents used before |
| Higher first-contact resolution | 5–15 pts | Percentage-point range reported across similar contact centres |
| Service level visibility | Live | Where all channels route through one queue |
Verified reviews
What clients say about our Dynamics work
Verified reviews from our clients on the same kind of work, published on Clutch.
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Silver Scintilla was responsive, respectful, and enjoyable to work with, quickly addressing any questions or requests.
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